Quotes from:
Minces, V., Pinto, L., Dan, Y., & Chiba, A. A. (2017). Cholinergic shaping of neural correlations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(22), 5725–5730. http://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1621493114
"Whereas previous work analyzed the influence of acetylcholine on total correlations (4) or noise correlations (14), it is not clear how these variables alone might influence neural coding (15)."
4. Goard M, Dan Y (2009) Basal forebrain activation enhances cortical coding of natural scenes. Nat Neurosci 12:1444–1449.
14 Thiele A, Herrero JL, Distler C, Hoffmann K-P (2012) Contribution of cholinergic and GABAergic mechanisms to direction tuning, discriminability, response reliability, and neuronal rate correlations in macaque middle temporal area. J Neurosci 32: 16602–16615.
15. Abbott LF, Dayan P (1999) The effect of correlated variability on the accuracy of a population code. Neural Comput 11:91–101.
"Theoretical research indicates that encoding capacity depends on the details of the correlation structure, analyzed in terms of the relationship between signal and noise corre- lations (12, 15–18)."
12. Gawne TJ, Richmond BJ (1993) How independent are the messages carried by adja- cent inferior temporal cortical neurons? J Neurosci 13:2758–2771.
15. Abbott LF, Dayan P (1999) The effect of correlated variability on the accuracy of a population code. Neural Comput 11:91–101.
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17. Jeanne JM, Sharpee TO, Gentner TQ (2013) Associative learning enhances population coding by inverting interneuronal correlation patterns. Neuron 78:352–363
18. Gu Y, et al. (2011) Perceptual learning reduces interneuronal correlations in macaque visual cortex. Neuron 71:750–761.
"Consistent with the latter observation, two studies have shown that attention (19) and learning (17) alter the relationship between signal and noise correlations in a manner that is thought to increase encoding capacity."
17. Jeanne JM, Sharpee TO, Gentner TQ (2013) Associative learning enhances population coding by inverting interneuronal correlation patterns. Neuron 78:352–363.
19. Ruff DA, Cohen MR (2014) Attention can either increase or decrease spike count correlations in visual cortex. Nat Neurosci 17:1591–1597.
"There have been several reports indicating that signal and noise correlations are related (13, 22) such that neuronal pairs with similar receptive fields (high signal correlations) tend to have larger common variability (high noise correlations). Although this phenomenon is well documented, only recently it was discovered that the tight association between signal and noise correlations decreases under conditions of learning and attention (17, 19)."
13, Cohen MR, Kohn A (2011) Measuring and interpreting neuronal correlations. Nat Neurosci 14:811–819.
22. Kohn A, Smith MA (2005) Stimulus dependence of neuronal correlation in primary visual cortex of the macaque. J Neurosci 25:3661–3673.
17. Jeanne JM, Sharpee TO, Gentner TQ (2013) Associative learning enhances population coding by inverting interneuronal correlation patterns. Neuron 78:352–363.
19. Ruff DA, Cohen MR (2014) Attention can either increase or decrease spike count correlations in visual cortex. Nat Neurosci 17:1591–1597.
"Our results support previous studies indicating that cholinergic activity produces an increase in the signal-to-noise ratio of in- dividual cortical neurons (35–37). However, the definition of signal to noise used in such studies has been questioned for its lack of relevance as a descriptor of the encoding efficiency of the neurons (21). In this work, we use a definition of signal to noise that more correctly reflects the capacity of single neurons to encode information (20, 21)."
35. Zinke W, et al. (2006) Cholinergic modulation of response properties and orientation tuning of neurons in primary visual cortex of anaesthetized Marmoset monkeys. Eur J Neurosci 24:314–328.
36. Sato H, Hata Y, Masui H, Tsumoto T (1987) A functional role of cholinergic innervation to neurons in the cat visual cortex. J Neurophysiol 58:765–780.
37. Sillito AM, Kemp JA (1983) Cholinergic modulation of the functional organization of the cat visual cortex. Brain Res 289:143–155.
20. Cover TM, Thomas JA (1991) Elements of Information Theory. Wiley Series in Tele- communications and Signal Processing (Wiley, New York).
21. Disney AA, Schultz SR (2004) Hallucinations and acetylcholine: Signal or noise? Behav Brain Sci 27:190–191.